Attachment of earnings orders

A court may issue an attachment of earnings order if you haven’t kept up with your CCJ payments. This allows money to be taken directly from your wage to pay back what you owe.

Your employer will be asked to send money from your pay cheque to the court. The court will then pass it on to your creditor.

If you haven’t kept up with your CCJ payments, your creditor might be able to apply for an attachment of earnings order unless you:

• owe less than £50
• are self-employed
• are unemployed
• work on a boat (except for fishing boats)
• are in the armed forces (different rules apply)

Your creditor may let you know that they’re applying for an attachment of earnings order. If they do, it’s a good idea to contact them straight away and see if you can agree a payment plan e.g. smaller instalments over a longer period. This may stop them applying for the order.

If you’ve been unable to agree a payment plan with your creditor and they apply for an attachment of earnings order, you’ll get a letter from the court. This is called an attachment of earnings order notification.

This letter will include an N56 ‘statement of means’ form.

You should complete this form and return it to the court along with your most recent payslip.

This must be done within eight days. If you miss this deadline, you might be summoned to court for questioning. If you still don’t respond, you could be prosecuted.

If the attachment of earnings order will cause you hardship, you can ask for it to be suspended.

You do this by ticking a box on the N56 form and providing reasons e.g. you’ll lose your job or you won’t be able to afford your bills.

If you’re granted a suspended order, you’ll need to pay your creditor directly instead but your employer won’t be involved.

If you miss payments, your creditor can reapply for an attachment of earnings order.

Let your creditor know if you’re applying for a suspended order.

If you’ve spoken to your creditor and agreed a payment plan and then you get an attachment of earnings order notification, don’t ignore it. Fill it in explaining the agreement you’ve made with your creditor.

The court will write to you letting you know how much will be taken from your wage each month.

This is down to the court but they set a minimum amount of income you must receive each month. The amount you pay will only come from earnings above this limit. You can’t get an attachment of earnings order if you get paid less.

Can I reduce the amount?

If you think the amount you’ve been ordered to pay is too high, you can apply for it to be changed by filling in an N244 form.

You must tell the court if you change jobs within seven days.

If you leave a job and are out of work for a time, the attachment of earnings will stop until you start a new role.

If you’re out of work for a long time, the court might agree to cancel the order. Call them to discuss this and they’ll tell you what you need to do.

No, for child maintenance arrears, you might get a deduction from earnings order. This is similar to an attachment of earnings order as it allows the Child Maintenance Service to take money direct from your wages. But they won’t have to get a CCJ against you.

The CMS will send you an arrears notice before they make the order though. If you don’t want them to go ahead with the order, try and agree a payment plan with them.

Yes, but there are different rules when it comes to council tax and attachment of earnings orders.  If you don’t pay, the council can apply to the court for a liability order to recover the debt. They don’t need to get a CCJ against you.

After the council gets a liability order, they can get an attachment of earnings order. They’ll send you a notice in the post - it will tell you how much they’ll take.

No, but the Department for Work and Pensions can use a direct earnings attachment (DEA) to take money direct from your monthly income to pay back benefit overpayments.

They won’t need to get a court order for a DEA but they should contact you before taking any money.

If you have more than one court order to pay back debt, you can ask for them to be consolidated so you’re only making one monthly payment. This might make it easier to budget e.g. if you have one CCJ and two attachment of earnings orders.

With a consolidated order, the full amount you owe each month will be taken out of your pay by your employer and sent to the court. The court then pays each of your creditors.

A consolidated order will cost you more in the long run, as the court takes 10p for every £1 in each monthly payment e.g. if you pay £100 a month, the court will take £10 of this and £90 will be divided among your creditors.

To apply for a consolidated order, write to the court listing all the orders you want to consolidate. Include details of your income and living expenses. You can use our budgeting tool to create this. It’s rare for the court to refuse an application for a consolidated order.